


Innocence Lost

by callmeonetrack



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Hansel and Gretel Fusion, Child Abuse, F/M, Minor Character Death, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 12:15:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9384629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmeonetrack/pseuds/callmeonetrack
Summary: Pilots as Hansel and Gretel? (Dark, Grimm-style)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Child Abuse; Violence.

"You're my brother now," Kara says with satisfaction, folding her little pocket knife away and sliding it back into her shoe.

Lee stares doubtfully at the blood smeared on his finger. Kara Thrace is his best friend in the whole world and he'd probably do anything she asked him to, but Lee's never been fond of the sight of blood. Especially his own. He grimaces when Kara pops her finger into her mouth. "Ewwww." She just grins around it and waggles her eyebrows at him. Lee looks away, but it's only seconds before he cuts his eyes back to her slyly to watch the way her red mouth purses around fair skin. Sun shines through the tree branches overhead, dappling her long hair with shades of lighter and darker gold. He's not gonna say it out loud, because Kara might get mad, but Lee's glad she's not his *real* sister.

Instead, he rustles in his pocket with his clean hand and pulls out some sweets, stuffing one into his mouth and offering the other to Kara.

She shudders at the sight and turns away. "No," she says, in a voice like ice.

"You don't like peppermint? I might have a lemondrop..." he trails off, digging in his pocket again, but stops when Kara almost shouts "NO!"

Lee's eyebrows raise and he freezes, the sweet burning a bit on his tongue.

"Sorry," she mutters, shoving her hair back out of her eyes. "I hate candy."

His brow wrinkles. They've been best friends since Kara and her mother moved into the cottage in the woods three fortnights ago, but she keeps surprising him. "Who hates candy?"

He's not really expecting an answer, certainly nothing more than a "Me, stupid!" or maybe Kara scrubbing her knuckles on his head like she does sometimes, but she's not even looking at him. She's just staring at the ground, real hard, like maybe she could set the grass on fire if she just did it long enough.

"Momma always tries to give me candy... _after_."

Lee's stomach churns sickly. He doesn't have to ask "after what?" He's seen the bruises on her arms and stomach. He drops the sweet on the ground like its scorching his palm and spits his own out too. Shifting closer on the fallen log, he slides his arm around Kara's thin shoulders. She stiffens for a few seconds like she always does, then her body relaxes, her head tilting onto his shoulder as she lets out a sigh.

"We could run away," Lee whispers, as if someone might hear.

"I have, dozens of times," Kara says, her face half buried in his tunic. "She always finds me."

"But I'll go with you this time!" Lee says, with more confidence than he really has. There are rumors about Kara’s mother. The kinder people in town call her a healer, the rest call her witch. "She won't find us if we're together. We can plan it! I know the woods better than anyone."

"We can't," she says, her mouth against his collarbone. " _You_ can't. Your dad will be mad."

"Yeah, I know."

Lee's father is a woodcutter, and he takes Lee with him to work every day, training him as an apprentice, showing him how to swing the axe at just the right spot to fell a tree. His favorite saying is, "A man isn't a man until he wields the blade, Son."

Lee hasn't told him how much he hates axes, how he longs to get out of the woods, to travel to the distant mountains at the edge of the kingdom. He's dreamed of climbing one forever.

But he's no longer climbing alone in his dreams.

Lee wraps his other arm around Kara and she startles, lifting wide eyes to his.

He takes a deep breath, his gaze locked to hers. "That is why we gotta go while we can, Kara. Right now."   

Hope suffuses her face, making her eyes shine. “Really? You mean it?”

Lee nods quick, ignoring the ripple of fear in his stomach. “You have to get away from her. Whatever it takes.”

She surprises him again, throwing her arms around his neck and squeezing. Lee breathes in the scent of her hair, shocked and pleased. Kara’s never hugged him first before. She pulls away sooner than he’d like, but disappointment barely registers because suddenly her mouth is pressed to his.

He’s never kissed a girl before. Never been kissed by one either. Lee’s heart is pounding and his ears are ringing and he’s not sure what he’s supposed to be doing, but then Kara pulls back, out of his arms, shock and fear written all over her face. He doesn’t understand the latter, until a faint, shrill voice breaks through the noise in his head. “-RA! KARA THRACE! I TOLD YOU TO BE BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES!”

She shivers once, then takes off running. Lee’s only a few steps behind, shouting for her to wait, but Kara’s always been faster than him and he has no idea where she lives. She hasn’t ever let him come to her house. She gets so far ahead he can barely see her hair whipping out behind her amid the trees; her light footprints a breadcrumb trail he doggedly follows through the thickening underbrush, branches catching on his skin.

He trips and goes down, banging his knee hard on a root, gasping for breath. “Kara!” He calls, but she’s gone. Wincing he staggers up, running straight ahead, hoping it’s not much further and then he hears a scream. Lee’s heart leaps into his throat, and then he’s sprinting, calling her name again over and over. He follows the sound of the scream, panicking that he only heard it the once, and finally stumbles into a small clearing.

A cottage is ahead, the front door thrown open and a roaring fire in the hearth. Lee runs forward, his hand reaching out and grasping the axe stuck into a chopping log without slowing, and bursts into the house. The witch has her hands around Kara’s throat, and she is silent and pale and slumped. His vision goes black, then red, and then Lee is crying out and the axe is hurtling through the air.

It lodges in her throat, blood arcing out in a fiery spray, spattering him, as the woman staggers backwards. Her hands fly up to her neck and she croaks an awful sound that might be her daughter’s name, and Lee is frozen, just watching in horror. Then she tilts and falls, tumbling like a great oak into the flames in the wide stone hearth, and Lee is scrambling over to Kara on his hands and knees. He shakes her shoulders, so afraid she won’t wake up but her eyes fly open, and she gasps for breath. Lee helps her sit up and she keeps her eyes fixed on him the whole time.

“Is she…gone?” she asks, her voice hitching slightly.

“Yes,” Lee answers, his gaze skipping involuntarily to the hearth where flames lick the dark silhouette of the body. Kara’s mother. He’s not sorry. Lee would do it again to save her, but it occurs to him suddenly that maybe she’ll hate him for this. His courage deserts him. “Kara, I- I didn’t mean to…” That’s not true. He stops and starts again. “She was hurting you and you looked --” Lee shakes his head. “I thought she was killing you,” mumbles into his lap, his hands, still dotted with blood spatters, twisting together over and over. They’ll take him away when they find out. His father will be so disappointed and he’ll never see Kara again.

Then her hand covers his, stilling the motion, and she slides her palm down, twining their fingers together. “I’m glad she’s gone,” she says quietly and squeezes his hand. The blood smears between them once more. 

“Come on,” she says, after a minute. “We gotta get outta here.” Kara gets up and pulls a bag out from under a small trundle bed, and starts racing around the cottage, throwing in food and cloth. Lee looks around, keeping his eyes away from the fire and notices the glass jars everywhere filled with cotton and liquids and luridly colored candy. Kara picks up a little bottle sitting next to an easel (the canvas on the easel is vivid and mesmerizing, a whorl of red and blue and yellow) and starts dousing the floor with it.

“What’s that? What are you doing?”

“Paint thinner. I’m setting it on fire. So everyone will think I died too.” She lifts her chin, like she’s challenging him to argue with her. “I’m done here. I’m not coming back, Lee.”

He just swallows hard and nods, “No, you’re not. And neither am I.” Lee picks up the bag she packed and pulls out the little metal lamplighter his father gave him to use to set the torches ablaze when they work at night. He grabs a rag douses it with the fluid and sets it ablaze, then tosses it into a far corner of the cottage. They join hands and run out the door and turn, heading away from the wood and towards the mountains that loom in the distance.

Maybe it’s just shock, but Lee isn’t sad or scared. In fact, with every step they take, his heart lifts a little, his step lightens. He doesn’t let go of Kara’s hand, and she doesn’t let go of his.

She’s not his sister, but she’s his family now.


End file.
